Is a “Court-Martial” convened under the Army Act a “Court” in terms of the Constitution? - Sarath N. Silva (Former Chief Justice)

“Court-Martial” any where even in a cave or under a tree, how can be considered as courts through Parliament exercises the judicial power of the People? asked former chief justice Sarath N Silva.


The Supreme Court being vested in terms of Article 125 of the Constitution, the sole and exclusive jurisdiction to interpret the Constitution, has upon a reference made to that Court, by the Court of Appeal, determined that “the Court Martial in terms of The Army Act is a ‘Court’ in terms of Article 89(d) of the Constitution”.


Article 89 specifies the matters that would disqualify a person from voting at any Election namely, the exercise of the franchise which forms part of the sovereignty of the People in terms of Article 3, being the basic Article of the Constitution. Therefore the determination has wider constitutional implications which transcend the immediate concerns of the parties to the case. This analysis is being done in the public interest in view of the wider Constitutional implications, with due respect to the Court and their Lordships who were members of the Divisional Bench.


Article 89(d) lays down that a person is disqualified from exercising the franchise if he is serving or has during the period of 7 years immediately preceding served a sentence of imprisonment of not less, than 6 months “imposed after conviction by any court” for an offence punishable by a term of not less than 2 years imprisonment. A person thus disqualified from being a voter is in terms of Article 91(1) (a) disqualified from being elected as a Member of Parliament and from sitting and voting in Parliament. In terms of Article 66, thereupon the seat of such M.P. shall become vacant. Thus a string of consequences follow upon a sentence “imposed after conviction by any court” as provided in Article 89(d). 


A similar disqualification was contained in Sector 68(c) of the previous Constitution of 1972. The words contained in Article 89(d) of the present Constitution are similar to the words in section 68(c) of the previous Constitution except for a very significant addition. In that the words “imposed after conviction by any court” have been added in the present Constitution. Thus when the two provisions are contrasted it would be seen that under the 1972 Constitution the fact that a person is serving or has served a sentence of imprisonment of 6 months or longer for an offence punishable with a term of 2 years or longer would be adequate to set the disqualification in motion. Whereas, under the present Constitution the fact of serving the term of imprisonment by itself would not suffice. An additional requirement has to be satisfied to bring about the disqualification, namely it was “imposed after conviction by any court”. It has to be noted with due respect, that the content of the two provisions and the fact that an added requirement was included in the present Constitution was not considered by the Supreme Court in making the determination. 

Sri Lanka Looses Home Advantage as a result of the local fools who suggested Keththaramma for the World Cup 2011 !

A match which would have being a victorious one for Sri Lanka turned in to a havock not because our lions performed badly, it's because of the fools who suggested & then developed Keththrammma for the world cup 2011...


Keththaramma stadium was some what a neutral one  till around  2004/2005 for day/night 
matches but turned completly in favour of team batting first after that... So this victory on this pitch relies on the team winning the toss...


The persons who should take the blame are Suraj Dandeniyya, Chairman of Sri Lanka Cricket D 
S De Silva & President Mahinda ( as he is the final decesion taker according to Goverment & 
his henchmens..). Also ICC, for not going for grounds which are equally supportive whether 
bat first or bat second (I don't say that we should go for 100 % equally favoring pitches, 
at leat 40/60 or 60/40). 


Most Sri Lankan fans are asking " why grounds like SSC, Galle Stadium & Dambulla Stadium 
were not developed for the world cup instead of this ground..." which are very much equally favouring...  


Anyway we still will go to the next round but what about the other matches held at this 
ground ? (SL vs AUS match, SL vs KEN,  One Quarter Final, One Semi Final as well as Pk vs CAN, AUs vs PK to be played on this ground )

If something is not done,  Very soon in future Cricket fans (When matches are played at Keththaramma) 
will wait for the toss as well as first secession but will leave the ground, if team they are supporting is batting second..


I think the ICC Decesion taking panel should think twice before giving the Chief Position to Money Crazy Indian in future...When they head something, they don't inspect most important things that has to be inspected....

Tunisia sets poll date amid turmoil !

(Prime Minister Ghannouchi - Was the PM Under BEN ALI for over a decade )

Tunisia's transitional government has said it will hold elections by mid-July at the latest, the official TAP news agency has said, quoting a cabinet statement.


The government "has decided that consultations with different political parties should not exceed mid-March.... Elections will be organised at the latest in mid-July 2011," the statement on Friday said.


The announcement came as tens of thousands of protesters rallied on Friday to demand the resignation of Mohamed Ghannouchi's, the prime minister, transitional government set up after last month's ousting of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the country's former president.


Demonstrators chanted "Ghannouchi leave" and "Shame on this government" as army helicopters circled above the crowd massed in the Kasbah government quarter, where police estimated that the number of people topped 100,000.


Protesters shouted "Revolution until victory" and "We will root out repression in our land".


"We are here today to topple the government," Tibini Mohamed, a 25-year-old student, told AFP news agency.

UNP Leader met the UNP-UK Branch in London

The Opposition Leader Mr Ranil Wickramasinghe met with the officials and supporters of the UNP-UK Branch during his recent visit to London. He was in London on his way to Prague to attend the annual conference of International Democratic Union. The event was held at Moor-Spice Event Centre in Wembley Park with a large gathering of UNP supporters. 


This was his first meeting with the officials of the UK Branch after his intervention in September last year to strengthen the UNP activities here.


The President of the Branch Mr Harsha Siriwardane welcomed the Leader and thanked him for paving way for the formation of a stronger Branch in United Kingdom. He outlined the future plans of the executive committee and highlighted that there had been a significant number of enquiries to join the membership of the Branch.


The party website is going through reconstruction and the future members will be able to join the Branch through the website. The annual membership fee is capped at £10. He also informed the Leader that the executive committee has decided to organise various fund raising and awareness events. 


The General Secretary of the Branch, Mr Chinthaka De Silva outlined the progress the Branch has made so far. He also brought to the attention that on instructions from Sirikotha, the Branch has decided to bank with Barclays as the previous account held with Lloyds is no longer valid. He also highlighted that the Branch has now successfully eradicated all the obstacles they faced to make it one strong unit in the UK. 


Mr Namal De Zoysa, the Chairman of Youth League acknowledged the remarks made by the General Secretary. He said there were certain elements trying to hamper the progress of the branch activities. He also brought to the attention of the Leader that the Youth Group is planning to organise a “6 a side” cricket tournament in May. 


Mr Harshaka Kannangara, the Media Secretary of the Branch informed the Leader that the Branch has so far issued several news releases with regard to recent incidents taken place in Sri Lanka including the assault on Dr Jayalath Jayawardane and attack on participants of the candlelight vigil on independence day. He also pointed out the UNP Professionals Association was set up in December last year as an affiliated organisation of the Branch.
Mr Wickramasinghe in his address commended executive committee for the progress made since his last visit to the UK. He also mentioned that he expects the Branch to educate the Sri Lankan diaspora about the burning issues in Sri Lanka.


He further pointed out that anyone is free to join the membership of the Branch but there will be only one Branch in the UK after his recent intervention to consolidate all groups under one banner. All members should abide by the guidance given by the leadership. He then mentioned that the party headquarters will closely work with the officials in the UK and thanked the members for their continued support. Finally, he mentioned that the UK Branch had been inactive over the past few years and advised the new executive committee that they should now move on and assured his fullest co-operation and support for all future activities. 


He posed for an official photograph of executive committee appointed for 2011 and launched the membership drive by giving the first membership card for 2011 to Mr Harsha Siriwardane. The other members also received their membership cards from him. He also gave guidance as to how to take the message of the party to the masses and requested the Branch to liaise with UK political parties, the commonwealth and the UNP Branches in EU.


Harshaka Kannangara
Media Secretary
UNP-UK Branch

America closes Libya embassy & readies sanctions

The United States shuttered its embassy in Libya on Friday and readied stiff financial and other penalties against Moammar Gadhafi and his loyalists, ending days of cautious condemnation by all but calling for the unpredictable leader's immediate ouster.


Gadhafi's legitimacy has been "reduced to zero," the White House said as it announced the steps.


The sharper U.S. tone and pledges of tough action came after American diplomatic personnel were evacuated from the capital of Tripoli aboard a chartered ferry and a chartered airplane, escorting them away from the violence to Malta and Turkey. As they left, fighting raged on in Tripoli and elsewhere in Libya as Gadhafi vowed to crush the rebellion that now controls large parts of the country.


With U.S. diplomats and others out of harm's way, the administration moved swiftly. Shortly after the chartered plane left Libyan airspace, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. had been constrained in moving against Gadhafi and his loyalists due to concerns over the safety of Americans but was now ready to bring more pressure on the government to halt its attacks on opponents.


"It's clear that Colonel Gadhafi has lost the confidence of his people," Carney told reporters. "He is overseeing the brutal treatment of his people, the fatal violence against his own people and his legitimacy has been reduced to zero in the eyes of his people."

Space shuttle discovery takes off !

The shuttle lifts off on its final mission to carry supplies and spare parts to the International Space Station.


Space shuttle discovery, NASA's most heavily traveled spacecraft, has blasted off from Florida on its final mission.


The shuttle blasted off on Thursday on its final mission carrying six astronauts and a load of supplies, spare parts and a robot for the International Space Station.


The shuttle lifted off at 4:53 p.m. EST (2153 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center, riding a flame-tipped pillar of smoke across the Atlantic Ocean as it soared toward space.


The launch was delayed three minutes when a range safety computer shut down before the planned 4:50pm EST (2150 GMT) liftoff. The problem was resolved with seconds to spare, clearing Discovery for launch.


The launch was the 133rd for the 30-year-old shuttle programme, with up to two flights remaining before the three-ship fleet is retired later this year.


Discovery made 39 of those flights, including both return-to-flight missions following the fatal Challenger and Columbia accidents.


"I think what will be most difficult will be on landing day when we know that that's the end of her mission, completely," said launch director Mike Leinbach.


The shuttle carries a storage room, a spare parts platform and a prototype humanoid robot for the space station, a $100bn project of 16 nations nearing completion after more than a decade of construction 220 miles (354 km) above the Earth.


The shuttles are being retired due to high operational costs and to free up money to develop new vehicles capable of traveling beyond the space station's orbit.


Source ; aljazeera

Upeksha Swarnamali to undergo plastic surgery for injury scars !

Upeksha Swarnamali (Crossed Over MP to Goverment) has been admitted to Lanka Hospital in Colombo for plastic surgery for the injury scars she had suffered at the hands of her husband.


According to hospital sources, the surgery is due to take place today (Feb. 23), and the hospital has been given special protection. No one uninvited will be allowed to go close to her room, and some of her artist friends had been turned away when they had gone to visit her.


She underwent surgery earlier at Sri Jayawardenapura Hospital for the wounds.Her husband Mahesh Chaminda Walawegama has been produced before courts and given bail.

Libyan Uprise - Gaddafi loses more Libyan cities !

Protesters wrest control of more cities as unrest sweeps African nation despite Muammar Gaddafi's threat of crackdown

.Muammar Gaddafi, Libya's long-standing ruler, has reportedly lost control of more cities as anti-government protests continue to sweep the African nation despite his threat of a brutal crackdown.


Protesters in Misurata said on Wednesday they had wrested the western city from government control. In a statement on the internet, army officers stationed in the city pledged "total support for the protesters".


The protesters also seemed to be in control of much of the country's east, and an Al Jazeera correspondent, reporting from the city of Tobruk, 140km from the Egyptian border, said there was no presence of security forces.


"From what I've seen, I'd say the people of eastern Libya are the ones in control," Hoda Abdel-Hamid, our correspondent, said.


She said there were no officials manning the border when the Al Jazeera team crossed into Libya.




People in charge'


"All along the border, we didn't see one policeman, we didn't see one soldier and people here told us they [security forces] have all fled or are in hiding and that the people are now in charge, meaning all the way from the border, Tobruk, and then all the way up to Benghazi.


"People tell me it's also quite calm in Bayda and Benghazi. They do say, however, that 'militias'  are roaming around, especially at night. They describe them as African men, they say they speak French so they think they're from Chad."


Major-General Suleiman Mahmoud, the commander of the armed forces in Tobruk, told Al Jazeera that the troops led by him had switched loyalties.


 "We are on the side of the people," he said. "I was with him [Gaddafi] in the past but the situation has changed - he's a tyrant."


Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, was where people first rose up in revolt against Gaddafi's 42-year long rule more than a week ago. The rebellion has since spread to other cities despite heavy-handed attempts by security forces to quell the unrest.


With authorities placing tight restrictions on the media, flow of news from Libya is at best patchy. But reports filtering out suggest at least 300 people have been killed in the violence.


But Franco Frattini, the Italian foreign minister, said there were "credible' reports that at least 1,000 had died in the clampdown.

Defiant Gaddafi

Amid the turmoil, a defiant Gaddafi has vowed to quash the uprising.

England edge past Dutch !

England avoid early humiliation in Cricket World Cup with six-wicket win over Netherlands with eight balls to spare.


England narrowly avoided humiliation in their opening World Cup Cricket Group B match, clinching a thrilling six-wicket victory with just eight balls to spare against the Netherlands in Nagpur on Tuesday.

Ryan ten Doeschate scored a dazzling century against England to lead the unfavoured Dutch to 292-6 but opener Andrew Strauss gave his team a platform with 88 from 83 balls, equalling the highest score by an England captain at a World Cup.

Jonathan Trott hit 62 at almost a run a ball but England still cut it fine, with Ravi Bopara hitting the winning runs with just eight balls remaining to take England to 296-4.

The Ashes winners were shocking in the field as ten Doeschate smashed three sixes and nine fours in a devastating show of power. The result suggests England could struggle in their next Group B match against tournament favourites India on Sunday.

Defiant Kernal Muammar Gaddafi vows to fight on - Already over 250 youth were killed !

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has vowed to fight on and die a "martyr", calling on his supporters to take back the streets from protesters demanding his ouster, shouting and pounding his fist in a furious speech on state TV.

Gaddafi, clad in brown robes and turban, spoke on Tuesday from a podium set up in the entrance of a bombed-out building that appeared to be his Tripoli residence hit by US air raids in the 1980s and left unrepaired as a monument of defiance.

"I am a fighter, a revolutionary from tents ... I will die as a martyr at the end," he said.

"Muammar Gaddafi is the leader of the revolution, I am not a president to step down ... This is my country. Muammar is not a president to leave his post."

"I have not yet ordered the use of force, not yet ordered one bullet to be fired ... when I do, everything will burn."

He called on supporters to take to the streets to attack protesters. "You men and women who love Gaddafi ...get out of your homes and fill the streets," he said. "Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs ... Starting tomorrow the cordons will be lifted, go out and fight them."

Gaddafi said "peaceful protests is one thing, but armed rebellion is another".

"From tonight to tomorrow, all the young men should form local committees for popular security," he said, telling them to wear a green armband to identify themselves. "The Libyan people and the popular revolution will control Libya."

The speech, which appeared to have been taped earlier, was aired on a screen to hundreds of supporters massed in Tripoli's central Green Square.

At times the camera panned out to show a towering gold-coloured monument in front of the building, showing a fist crushing a fighter jet with an American flag on it - a view that also gave the strange image of Gaddafi speaking alone from behind a podium in the building's dilapidated lobby, with no audience in front of him.

We will vote against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC, India warns Sri Lanka

Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka Ashok Kantha has warned Sri Lankan government that it will vote against Sri Lanka at the upcoming session of UN Human Rights Council if Sri Lanka did not release the arrested fishermen.


In a hurriedly arranged meeting on Friday Ashok Kantha has told Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa that India had no other option as Sri Lanka continuous to ignore polite requests not to kill and harm Indian fishermen.


It is also noticeable that the high commissioner sought a meeting with the Defence Secretary bypassing the normal protocol to meet Foreign Minister G.L.Peiris.


India is very well aware that Prof. G.L. Peiris is a mere puppet with no powers to resolve any issue at the ministry let alone issues on international affairs. Prof. Peiris was only recently strongly dressed down by Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna on the same issue when the pair met in Bhutan.


Analysts are of the opinion that Sri Lanka has clearly burnt its fingers as the island continuously disregarded warnings by India not to create a political uncertainty in India at a time it is facing elections in Tamil Nadu.


Mahinda Rajapaksa government that maintains having no proper foreign policy as the foreign policy and undermines the foreign ministry in its bilateral and multilateral dealings has sunk under the pressure by India, a country that strongly supported its war against the LTTE.

Minister SB's wife forcibly takes hold of a house in Colombo with the help of the IGP !

Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake's wife Tamara Dissanayake has forcibly taken charge of a valuable house in Barnes Place, Colombo with the help of IGP Dr. Mahinda Balasuriya, according to a senior official from the Police Headquarters.The house at 53/3, Barnes Place is owned by a Sri Lankan residing in the USA. Palitha Tenuwara, who had worked for a while at Sri Lanka Telecom, the house on rent and has not been rented out to any one else afterwards.


When S.B. Dissanayake's sons heard of a house in Barnes Place being shut without owners, they had informed of it to their mother and had decided forcibly take the place.


The senior police officer said that although the police have received information about many incidents where people have forcibly acquired lands and houses without owners in Colombo, the complaints have been discarded due to the involvement of politicians and underworld members in such acquisitions.


The official added that while most of these lands belong to Sri Lankan Tamil residing overseas, a large number of acquisitions have been made by underworld members affiliated to Minister Mervyn Silva.


Source; lankanewsweb.com

Karu Jayasuriya Says ; " Outlawed Commissioner turns lawless, Gives illicit support to Govt.

We express our displeasure regarding the decision taken by the Commissioner of Elections to postpone elections of 60 local government bodies indefinitely, even prior to an order is made by the Courts, where 60 petitions have been filed challenging the rejection of nominations.


Already an order has been made by the Appeal Court preventing the conduct of elections for 3 local government bodies, namely, Akuressa, Akmeemana and Moneragala. We consider the decision of the Commissioner of Elections, as a pronouncement made before hand, since he has taken the decision even prior to an order made by a Court of Law.


The present Act for Local Government Elections does not provide powers to the Commissioner of Elections to postpone elections of the relevant local government bodies. Having taken this decision, we doubt whether the Commissioner has taken the law unto himself. 


The above decision of the Election Commissioner has provided an opportunity to the Government to avoid a defeat in the present local government elections.


Visit lankaenews for further details 

‘Outlawed’ Elections Commissioner Mr. Dissanayake postpones elections of 60 local Govt. bodies !

Elections to 60 local Govt. bodies had been postponed indefinitely by the Elections Commissioner Dissanayake after accepting nominations.


This postponement had been made in respect of local Govt. bodies where political parties and independent groups have filed action in courts against the rejection of their nomination papers. Among those local bodies where the elections are postponed are 10 Municipal councils and 49 local Govt. bodies.


The reason cited by additional Elections Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya in defense of this postponement is , as action has been filed in the courts over the rejection of nominations for elections to these bodies , elections arrangements cannot be conducted until the court gives a verdict.


Source ; lankaenews &  Sirasa News First

Cricket Fans left without tickets as website crashes ! - World Cup 2011

If ever a URL contained in its few words an entire saga, it had to be the one that thousands of World Cup ticket buyers found themselves facing on Monday:



http://www.icccwc2011.kyazoonga.com/Tickets/Error/. The ICC World Cup 2011 is now momentarily defined not by its long first round, the presence of its much-abused fringe element, the Associates, or its extremely malleable home advantage quarter-final round, but instead by its ticketing error.


The most prominent errors took place when the official ticketing partners, Kyazoonga.com's servers were overwhelmed with the load on Monday afternoon when they went 'live' with sales for the finals and semi-finals at 1pm India time. Within a matter of ten minutes, the website received hits of close to ten million, many of those caused by people refreshing the site. It would have needed, a Kyazoonga staffer said, a server farm the "size of a football field" to keep up with that kind of demand. The site crashed at 1.05pm and the few people who had got into the system and begun purchasing their tickets found their plans hanging somewhere in cyberspace.


The website went online again at around 9.30pm IST with a statement that no tickets for the finals & semi-finals had been sold on Monday due to the system issues and that updates about the ticket sales would follow. So, all the tickets allocated for online sales will still be available once the Kyazoonga network teams in India, Europe and the United States get their servers up and running again. Kyazoonga were not willing to reveal an approximate time when that was expected to happen.


A Kyazoonga spokesperson said while the surge in traffic had been expected, the site had not anticipated its scale. When ticket sales for World Cup group matches first went live on June 1, 2010, there had been no issues over server capacity. The firm had expected the demand to be several times over for the knockout games, "maybe five to ten times over but not 100." There were even people knocking at the door of the Kyazoonga offices in New Delhi asking to purchase World Cup final tickets.


What has infuriated World Cup fans - whose angry comments on ESPNcricinfo have hit the newswires all day - is not merely the fact that it has been impossible to buy tickets for the final online, but that there are so few tickets available to the general public at a venue with a very small capacity by Indian standards. The 33,000-seater Wankhede Stadium is one of the two smallest Indian grounds hosting World Cup matches. Only Mohali with a capacity of 27,500 is smaller. The rest are as follows: Eden Gardens - 63,000, Motera - 54,000, Chepauk - 45,000, Ferozshah Kotla - 42,000, Nagpur - 45,000, Chinnaswamy - 37,000. Among the 33,000 seats in the Wankhede, only 4000 are for sale to the public - the rest will be distributed to the ICC and the Mumbai Cricket Association's member clubs - which is a disproportionately small number for the biggest event in world cricket. All previous finals have been held at larger venues except for the 2007 final in Bridgetown and the first three editions. Those were played at Lord's, which at the time had a capacity of 28,000, but the number of tickets made available to the public was still somewhere around 14,000.


The ticket pricing at the Wankhede, according to the ICC's official ticket guide, is the most expensive across the World Cup. The price-range for the first match at the Wankhede on March 13, New Zealand v Canada, is between Rs 2500 to Rs 3750. The March 18 match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka ranges from Rs 5000 to Rs 7500. The World Cup finals tickets are priced between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000.


The other issue surrounding tickets that has affected grounds in India is that ticket sales are heavily dependent on the host team's presence in any match. India are hosting most of the neutral games while co-hosts Bangladesh are staging only the six group matches featuring their own team and two quarter-finals, and Sri Lanka are hosting 13 matches, five featuring the home team, six as stand-in hosts for Pakistan, and one quarter-final and a semi-final.


Source; ESPNcricinfo, AFP

Houses given by India consists only of the foundation !

So far none of the houses promised by the Indian government to the displaced persons in the North and East have been completed yet. The Indian government promised 50,000 houses to the displaced and so far it is only the foundation that was laid at the launching ceremony that is visible, an official from the Jaffna District Secretariat said. The Sri Lankan government announced the Indian government's decision to done the houses on June 10, 2010 and the first phase of constructing 1,000 houses commenced in December.


Although it was said that the 1,000 houses that were being constructed by India's Free Fab company would be handed over to the people in April, so far work on the houses have not commenced yet, the official said.


Source ; lankanewsweb

Civilians in two camps asked to leave on a Presidential order !

TNA parliamentarian Shivashakthi Anandan has said that civilians who were in the Punthottam and Sithambapuram in Vavuniya for the past 17 years due to the conflict in the Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi areas in the Jaffna District have been asked to immediately vacate the camps and return to their home towns.


There are 830 persons from 252 families in the Punthottam camp and 921 persons from 275 families in the Sithambapuram and they are faced with a great difficulty in being asked to vacate the camp they have been residing in for the past 17 years in such a hurry.
While there are school going children also in the camps, this sudden decision has posed a problem for them to continue in their studies as well. When Anandan had inquiredabout the matter from the Vavuniya District Secretary he had been informed that the order was made following a Presidential directive.


Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi areas were affected by the floods. The persons who were resettled earlier are still under trees. If there are more people taken there would be a bigger problem, Anandan says.


Vavuniya District Secretary P.M. Charles said that the displaced persons are being resettled in their former home towns together with the Resettlement Ministry.


When asked if the Presidential Secretariat had ordered these people to be resettled before the forthcoming local government elections, Charles said that the order was given by the Presidential Task Force.


Source ; lankanewsweb

Attorney General’s Department Biased Towards The Ruling Party (UPFA) - Claims JVP

The JVP has accused the Attorney General’s Department of being biased towards the governing party without safeguarding the public officials.

JVP parliamentarian Anura Kumara Dissanayake told a press conference that the people need to be aware of the current state of the judiciary and understand that the cases being heard against the rejection of nomination lists was more than what appears to be.

He also said that the governing UPFA and the main opposition UNP should not have challenged the rejection of its nomination lists, but accept the shortcomings on their part.

“If there has been a shortcoming in preparing the nomination lists, it has to be accepted. Two of our lists were also rejected and when our legal experts looked at them and explained things to us, we realized that we had made a mistake, so we did not file a case,” he said.
Dissanayake noted that in the event a political party has violated the laws that have been approved by them in parliament in the first place, it was fair for the nomination lists to be rejected on those grounds.

He also said the JVP would take legal action if the rejected nomination lists of the UPFA and UNP for the local government bodies in Akmemana, Akuressa and Moneragala Pradeshiya Sabhas were given the green light by courts.

Also in our web site, we did point out that this is an illegal move, ( even to postphone !) taking in to account what happened to UNP's Colombo Municipal Council nomination papers when they when to court last time. If by any decision, as JVP point out too, If green light is given for above rejections, it will be a black mark for Sri Lanka Internationally.

Elections for 60 councils postponed !

Elections for 60 local government councils have been postponed indefinitely. According to the Department of Elections the Commissioner of Elections has taken this decision as legal action has been taken by certain political parties and independent groups against rejection of nominations for these councils.

Accordingly, elections for these 60 councils will not be held on 17th March and they will be held only after the legal processes regarding them have been completed states the Department of Elections.

We have to wait a& see where this is heading to....

Lions Starts with a powerful victory - Full Match World Cup HighLights

For the many who slammed the ICC's decision to expel Associates from the next World Cup, this was a bad day. After Kenya were embarrassed by a modest New Zealand team, Canada desperately needed to showcase why minnow teams belong on the global stage. Instead they were overwhelmed by 210 runs against Sri Lanka, who opened their World Cup campaign as emphatically as their co-hosts India did on Saturday.


Mahela Jayawardene stroked his way to the fastest World Cup hundred by a Sri Lankan, sharing a 176-run stand with his captain Kumar Sangakkara, before the home side's pace bowlers rushed through a hapless Canadian line-up to deliver a crushing victory.


After India's fervoured opening in Mirpur, proceedings at Hambantota felt much more leisurely, and with a combination of sight screen problems and a few injuries, it took the visitors four hours to get through their fielding effort. For the first 20 overs of Sri Lanka's innings the scoring rate was almost as sluggish - despite a 59-ball half-century for Tillakaratne Dilshan - as Canada demonstrated the ideal model for Associate cricket. Disciplined dobbers combined with swift fielding and a slowish track to keep Sri Lanka in check.


It was only when Jayawardene arrived that Sri Lanka's campaign really kicked into gear. He was in total control, threading the spinners through the finest gaps and caressing boundaries at will. Sangakkara was not quite as fluent, needing 47 deliveries to find his first boundary. He survived two moments of alarm, when he was dropped on 12 by by 16-year-old Nitish Kumar, on as a substitute, and again on 48 by the rotund legspinner Balaji Rao.


Jayawardene barely mistimed a ball but twice survived reviews from Canada captain Ashish Bagai, who was convinced he was out caught behind. On both occasions the appeal was spontaneous and exuberant but the UDRS - without Snicko and HotSpot - revealed nothing. With those behind him, Jayawardene's glances, chips, pick-up-sweeps and even a reverse-thwack toyed with an attack that faded under pressure.


There was no route back for Canada as the pair cashed in against a tiring attack. It's becoming one of cricket's more quirky stats that Sangakkara can't seem to reach three figures in ODI cricket anymore. His last century was in June 2008 and he has now gone 60 matches without a hundred, despite scoring heavily over the period.


He had the ideal opportunity today, but inexplicably popped a gentle return catch to John Davison when eight runs short. By this stage the only trouble for Jayawardene was the heat and he looked exhausted as he crawled the single to bring up his record-breaking century.


While victory was always going to be beyond them, a competitive showing with the bat would have lifted the spirits of a dank World Cup day but Canada's top order folded against a sparky new-ball pairing. The hulking Thislan Perera proved too quick for John Davison and Zubin Sukari before returning later to snare Bagai. The looming threat of rain forced Sangakkara to swap seam for spin to rush to 20 overs - the minimum needed to constitute a match - but once that threat cleared Sri Lanka's job was as good as done.


At 40, Davison has had plenty of experience but appears to be trading off the World Cup century he made eight years ago. In the build-up Canada were keen to point to the clutch of youngsters who had come through their Under-19s side but come the day Kumar and Hiral Patel - their two bright batting talents - were left out. After today's showing both can expect to make their senior World Cup debuts soon.


Rizwan Cheema offered a glimpse of the big-hitting that gave England a fright but by that stage that game was meandering towards the inevitable. After two matches and two crushing defeats, the Associates are doing the ICC's case no harm at all.


Written by Sahil Dutta - crickinfo